I can't really comment on "complete failure". Since some great games were published by Squeenix after the merger. But the "no vision" part is absolutely dead on. This is a company that seems almost entirely lead by a gaggle of small time artists and nobody with a compelling artistic vision.

When they develop a good game in house, it almost feels like they did it by accident.

But it seems like they haven't developed anything that was an unqualified success since 2007's TWEWY. More jarringly, they've done quite a bit this generation to damage their biggest brands what with FF13-14 and Dragon Quest X being varying levels of disappointing.

Nothing but good things about either one? Though 13 has it's fans, there's a MASSIVE contingent of people who have nothing but hate for the game, and I don't think I've -ever- heard a positive thing said about 14.

I think "lack of vision" sums up SquareEnix quite nicely. They have a stable of great properties that, for the most part, they don't milk nearly as much as they should. HD remakes are easy money and fans love them, but they drag their feet on everything (like releasing a Kingdom Hearts collection without KH2?!). They focus so much money on delivering amazing graphics that they seem to forget that some of their simplest games are the most fun (TWEWY, Chrono Trigger, and the old FF games).

They also seem to have no idea how to distribute their products. They remade Final Fantasy VII on PC with achievements and didn't put in on STEAM. Really? That service should be LOADED with old Final Fantasy games, each one going for ten bucks or more a pop. I know I'd buy every single one again, as would a lot of their fans.

Square needs to hire some young Turks (FF7 reference, lol) to work on creating rich, interesting, but graphically limited turn-based RPGs to sell on the digital market. I hate to say this, but it might be time to take big daddy Final Fantasy in the direction of an action RPG. They want it to have mass-appeal, and they spend a lot of dough on it, so they may as well go Mass Effect style and introduce direct control of all the crazy moves that they love to show off in combat these days.

Deus EX: HR was under development before Square acquired Eidos though (it was Eidos Montreal's first project and the studio opened in 2007), and Sleeping Dogs was almost entirely finished under the aegis of Activision until Activision cancelled the project and Squeenix bought the rights (and changed the title from "True Crime: Hong Kong".)

So they can buy things that are good, sure, but how well does that really reflect on them?

I absolutely love Just Cause 2, I've got it on the PS3 and PC actually. Haven't played much of the story because I'm content to just run around doing whatever the hell I feel like. I've been trying to get in on the multiplayer beta for the PC but so far no luck.

I think SE is awesome. My favorite game of all-time is an SE game (FFXII), and I think XIII and XIII-2 are great games that are very worthy of the FF name. And like Keji said; they brought us DE:HR and Sleeping Dogs, 2 of my favorites of this gen.